


whipped as fuck

by all_ships_are_my_otp



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Heartmarks, M/M, Pining, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, not really soulmates though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 08:20:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11413935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_ships_are_my_otp/pseuds/all_ships_are_my_otp
Summary: Gilfoyle realizes he’s falling in love with Dinesh on the day he meets him. He tries to get over his feelings. It doesn’t work. Meanwhile, Dinesh is clueless, but a certain event makes him reevaluate his relationship with Gilfoyle.





	whipped as fuck

**Author's Note:**

> This is a heartmark AU. It’s explained in the story, but here’s how it works: On their left wrist, everyone has a heartmark, which is a patch of skin covered in red/black blots. Each blot is for a person they love. The bigger the blot, the more they love the person. Light pink is platonic, red is normal love, dark red is a deeper, more lasting love. If you fall in love and then out of love with a person, you get a black spot that’s permanent. The bigger, the more serious the love was at its peak.

 

When Dinesh was a little kid, he never bothered to cover up his heartmark. The translucent sheet of pink on his left wrist stood for platonic love for his family. Since everyone his age had a similar mark, there was no reason for secrecy.

 

In high school, more and more people started wearing long-sleeved shirts and wristbands to cover their left wrists. Dinesh wondered if the people that covered their heartmarks all were in love and had red blotches to show for it, or if their marks were nothing more than pale pink skin like his.

 

When he moved to the US for college, he started noticing others’ constant pitying glances when they saw his unblemished heartmark. All of a sudden, it was no longer normal for Dinesh to have never loved another person before.

 

Dinesh took to wearing long-sleeved rugby sweaters daily.

 

**

 

Immediately after Gilfoyle’s parents explained what heartmarks were, Gilfoyle asked for a wristband to cover his own.

 

“Why would you want to do that, sweetie? The pink just means you love me and your father. It’s completely normal for a boy your age.”

 

“I don’t want other people to know how I feel,” a seven-year-old Gilfoyle pouted, rolling down the sleeves of his sweatshirt.

 

The first blemish on his heartmark appeared less than a year later. A girl named Marisa joined their class. After discovering that she loved Pokemon as much as he did, Gilfoyle found a small pale red freckle on his heartmark. He told nobody. He tried to distance himself from Marisa as best as he could. Within a few weeks, any affection he felt for her had faded. The red dot on his heartmark turned black.

 

He hated that he cared too much. That he would grow attached to others so easily. Every so often, a new red dot would appear, and Gilfoyle would try his best to distance himself from the person until the dot turned black. Tiny black dots, all over his heartmark. He would sometimes have nightmares about red dots becoming larger and darker in hue until his entire body was covered in a blood-red hue. Something about the idea of having a large blotch on his heartmark repulsed him. He told himself it was because he was a Satanist. But deep down, he knew he was just afraid.

 

Most of all, he hated meeting people with blank heartmarks. He hated having to constantly lie about the state of his heartmark just to fit in at his Church. He envied Tara, whose heartmark was barely distinguishable from the surrounding skin. (His own heartmark, on the other hand, sported a pea-sized red dot for her. If they spent a long time separated, it would slowly turn black, but whenever they had sex Gilfoyle would always immediately be able to feel the red color pulsating back into it.)

 

Most of all, he hated Dinesh. Dinesh had been wearing a sweater with loose sleeves the day they first met. Gilfoyle had kept his eyes glued to Dinesh’s left wrist until the sleeve inevitably slipped, revealing a mark nearly as plain as Tara’s. He knew nothing about the guy—he hadn’t even spoken to him yet—and he was already fiercely jealous of him.

 

**

 

“So, you’re the other new person in Erlich’s incubator, huh? My name’s Dinesh.”

 

“Gilfoyle.”

 

“You know where the other guys who live here are? And wasn’t Erlich supposed to be here to show us around or something?”

 

“I believe they have day jobs at Hooli. No idea where Erlich is. Maybe he’s at his dispensary again.”

 

“I saw they have an Xbox in the living room. You wanna see what games they have?”

 

“Fuck yes.”

 

Gilfoyle feels his heartmark pulse. He immediately knows what it is. _Fuck, not again._ Yet another red dot he would have to systematically eradicate. That evening, he carefully locked his bedroom door before pulling up his left sleeve and inspecting it. Dinesh’s blemish was bean-shaped, crimson and already as large as Tara’s. It was the largest mark he’d ever seen on his own wrist, and Gilfoyle had just met the guy. Fuck. This wasn’t good.

 

The next day, Gilfoyle tries to distance himself from Dinesh. But he quickly realizes that Dinesh is the only tolerable person living in this house. Richard is never around, Bighead is an idiot and Erlich is an asshole. Gilfoyle permits himself to spend the day with Dinesh. Of course, they have a great time. They mostly spend the day programming, but they also drink beer, insult each other and bitch about bugs in their apps. They immediately understand each other. Gilfoyle brings Dinesh snacks and beer from the kitchen even though he doesn’t explicitly ask for them. Dinesh always seems to know when Gilfoyle is ready to take a break from work and play Call of Duty.

 

A day turns into a week, a week into a few months. Every day, Gilfoyle checks his heartmark before bed. Every day, Dinesh’s blot ever-so-slightly increases in size and darkens in hue. Eventually, it takes up almost the entirety of Gilfoye’s left wrist. The countless black dots are still visible, but they are slightly shrunken. Gilfoyle’s heartmark is overflowing with Dinesh’s dark red color, and the black dots are being squished in the process.

 

**

 

When Dinesh moved into the incubator, the first thing he tried to do was to get a glimpse of the others’ heartmarks. He was curious, more than anything. If there was hope for him to meet another adult with a blank heartmark, it would be here—in a house full of programmers.

 

Erlich doesn’t even attempt to cover his up. It’s an abomination—a swirl of red and black blobs of all different sizes, fading into each other. Richard and Bighead usually cover their heartmarks, but after a few weeks of observation Dinesh had eventually caught them drunk on the couch, wearing shirts with rolled-up sleeves and talking about nothing. Richard and Bighead had matching light pink circles, signaling that they were best friends. Bighead’s heartmark was otherwise blank; Richard had a small red dot that he refused to talk about.

 

Gilfoyle, however, was a mystery. Dinesh had been trying to catch as much as a glimpse of his heartmark for months, but he had seen nothing. Gilfoyle wore long-sleeved flannel shirts daily and a tight exercise band over his heartmark as an extra precaution. Sometimes Gilfoyle would notice Dinesh trying to peer at his heartmark.

 

“Stop your obvious attempts to see my heartmark. I told you. I’m a Satanist. There’s nothing to see.”

 

**

 

They quit their apps to start Pied Piper. Jared joins Pied Piper. His wrist is covered with black blotches, some alarmingly large. But as he spends more time in Pied Piper, a certain dark red blotch on Jared’s wrist grows. Dinesh sees Richard’s wrist, and notices his red dot has grown slightly.

 

**

 

At TechCrunch, Dinesh meets a beautiful blond-haired woman wearing a pink sweatshirt. She shows him the Java method she wrote. It’s some of the most beautiful code he has ever seen. He feels his heartmark pulse. He excuses himself to the men’s room and checks his heartmark. Sure enough, there’s a small, bean-shaped blotch of red on his inner left wrist.

 

For some reason, Dinesh’s first instinct is to tell Gilfoyle.

 

“I mean she’s attractive—but almost every woman is attractive. It was her mind. She wrote this Java method that was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Elegant, tight...there’s just something so hot about a woman that can code like that...”

 

Gilfoyle laughed slowly, and Dinesh trailed off, confused.

 

“You know I wrote that code, right?”

 

“What? No. It was on her system.”

 

“An old Macbook pro with shitty stickers? She doesn’t code. I wrote it for her. You’re not attracted to her, you’re attracted to my code.”

 

“Fuck you, that’s disgusting.”

 

“Face it. You want to fuck my code.”

 

**

 

Dinesh goes to her hotel room to watch _Cloud Atlas._ She initiates sex, but no matter how hard he tries, he doesn’t feel anything for her. It doesn’t take long for Dinesh to realize things aren’t going to get better. He apologizes awkwardly and leaves her room.

 

He stood in the empty hallway, alone. This woman was the first person to appear on his heartmark. Why didn’t he feel attracted to her? Was there something wrong with him?

 

“Why am I incapable of love?” he mutters, his voice echoing slightly in the empty hallway.

 

He goes to the lobby and sees Gilfoyle at the bar.

 

“I knew you couldn’t do it,” Gilfoyle greets him. “Drink up. It won’t change who you are.”

 

“Shut up,” Dinesh says, fighting back tears. He grabs Gilfoyle’s drink and chugs it. “I just want to forget that this ever happened.”

 

“Your heartmark certainly won’t,” Gilfoyle says flatly.

 

“Fuck you. As if you’re capable of understanding what I’m going through.”

 

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

 

“You like having a blank heartmark. I hate it. You don’t know what it’s like to hate yourself for all your life for having a blank one. Then, today, I finally get a red dot. But after you told me the code was yours, I didn’t feel a thing for her. No matter how hard I tried. There’s got to be something wrong with me. I must just be incapable of loving people—even people on my heartmark.”

 

“Maybe the dot wasn’t for her.”

 

Dinesh’s head is starting to rush from the sudden influx of alcohol. Maybe if he had been more levelheaded, he would have noticed how hesitantly Gilfoyle spoke and how he looked down at his empty beer glass nervously when Dinesh looked at him.

 

“No, it had to have been her,” Dinesh says dismissively. “My heartmark pulsed during our conversation when I saw her code. I was only interacting with her.”

 

A waiter comes by with a platter of expensive-looking drinks. Dinesh takes two, gives Gilfoyle one and chugs the other.

 

“The most depressing part about all this,” Dinesh says, slurring slightly, “is that the red dot is probably black already. You know, for the longest time I would have preferred a black dot over an empty heartmark. But now that I think about it, it’s just depressing. I finally thought I was falling in love with somebody, and she was into me for mysterious reasons, and I still fucked things up. It’ll just be a constant reminder of how I fucked up and how I’ll probably fuck up again. If I’m lucky enough for another woman to be interested in me.”

 

Dinesh clumsily reaches for Gilfoyle’s untouched drink.

 

“Stop,” Gilfoyle says, swatting his hand away.

 

“Fuck you. If I’m not going to have sex, I should at least be able to drink.”

 

“Don’t. Please. I’ve never seen you this drunk before.”

 

“Stop pretending like you care. You’re probably just trying to reverse-psychology me into drinking more, so you can humiliate me.”

 

“I’m actually not.”

 

“So what are you doing?”

 

Gilfoyle pauses. “Come on. We’re going up to the hotel room. So you can wallow in your pity in private instead of embarrassing yourself in front of all these strangers.”

 

Gilfoyle wraps an arm around him and leads him upstairs. Dinesh leans into his touch, following him without thinking.

 

**

 

As soon as they arrive in their hotel room, Dinesh collapses on the nearest couch. Gilfoyle immediately misses the warmth that radiated from Dinesh’s body and the way Dinesh wrapped an arm around his back, clinging to him for support. Gilfoyle gives Dinesh a glass of water. Dinesh takes a cautious sip, then quickly drinks the rest.

 

“You know, I’m not actually that drunk,” Dinesh says. “I just feel like shit. Emotionally.”

 

Gilfoyle sits next to him, his legs just barely not-touching Dinesh’s.

 

“Hey Gilfoyle?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Can you do something for me?”

 

 _Of course._ “Depends what it is.”

 

“Please don’t make fun of me for what happened. Don’t even bring it up. Even better, just forget it even happened.”

 

“You know, you’re not the first person to get a black dot on their heartmark before. It’s completely normal.”

 

“That’s the problem,” Dinesh says, practically whispering. “My heartmark. It’s still red.”

 

Gilfoyle feels a dizzying surge of hope. Dinesh said that his heartmark pulsed right after he saw the Java code. _What if that dot is really for me?_

 

“I felt it surge while you were getting me that glass of water. So I checked it. It’s bigger now. And dark red. Fuck, I must be the first person ever to have a malfunctioning heartmark. It probably thinks I’m still having sex with that girl when actually I’m sitting here alone feeling sorry for myself.”

 

“You’re not alone,” Gilfoyle blurts out before he can stop himself.

 

“Figuratively speaking.”

 

Dinesh looks vulnerable and hurt. A fleeting thought in the back of Gilfoyle’s mind wishes he could kiss him. “Still,” Gilfoyle says, “We’re friends. That’s something.”

 

Dinesh studies him, eyebrows slightly furrowed, raw emotion and self-pity turning contemplative. Dinesh only looked like this when he was thinking carefully about something.

 

“Am I on your heartmark?” Dinesh asks. “As a friend, I mean. Like how Richard and Bighead have pink spots for each other.”

 

“I told you my heartmark is blank,” Gilfoyle says mechanically.

 

“You say that, but if it really was, would you cover it up? You say you’re proud that it’s blank.”

 

Gilfoyle squeezes his hands into fists. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

 

Dinesh immediately stops his line of questioning. Gilfoyle feels a surge of gratefulness, followed by a slight prickling sensation in his heartmark.

 

Dinesh yawns. “Fuck, I just got really tired. Goodnight, Gilfoyle,” he says, lying down on the couch and resting his head on a nearby pillow.

 

Gilfoyle watches Dinesh as he closes his eyes and falls asleep immediately. Gilfoyle finds himself grinning affectionately.

 

“Goodnight, Dinesh,” he whispers softly. He goes back to the hotel lobby, shutting the hotel room door quietly as he leaves. He rejoins Erlich, Richard, Monica and Jared at the hotel bar, but the conversation feels uncharacteristically dull. The only reason he ever tolerated Pied Piper events in the first place was because he spent all his time with Dinesh.

 

**

 

After TechCrunch, Gilfoyle notices that Dinesh is spending a lot less time on his phone than usual. When Dinesh goes to the bathroom and leaves his phone unlocked on his desk, Gilfoyle investigates. Dinesh has deleted Tinder. He hasn’t texted or called anybody except Jared and his mom for two weeks.

 

“What are you doing with my phone?” Dinesh asks, walking back to his desk.

 

“Just posting all your dick picks onto your LinkedIn profile,” Gilfoyle says casually.

 

“Well, have fun with that. I don’t take dick pics, I’m not fucking stupid.”

 

“Oh no, I was just posting pictures of your face. Because you know, you’re a dick.”

 

Dinesh glares at him and snatches his phone back. “Ha, how original.”

 

“My insult wasn’t any less original than your insult insulting my insult’s originality.”

 

“Don’t even try to claim that your insult was original. I know for a fact that we’ve had this exact conversation word for word at least four times now.”

 

“So what should we be working on again?”

 

“You’re finishing the differencing engine and I’m fixing some front-end bugs. _”_

 

Gilfoyle loves how he and Dinesh are always in sync. How they can seamlessly transition between bickering, hanging out and getting actual work done.

 

“Oh yeah, I had a question about that. I’m supposed to integrate the differencing engine into the platform. How do you think I should configure this API...”

 

Dinesh wheels his chair over to Gilfoyle’s desk. They talk about tech for a while. Dinesh is describing how a module he wrote works when Gilfoyle feels his heartmark pulse again. Because of course it does. Dinesh is a competent coder (even though Gilfoyle likes to tell him otherwise). Dinesh is the only person Gilfoyle has actually enjoyed working with. And when Dinesh is thinking carefully about something, there’s something about his intense gaze and slightly pursed lips that makes him look extremely attractive to Gilfoyle, and Gilfoyle actually has to physically fight the urge to lean over, grab Dinesh and kiss him.

 

**

 

When they need a break from work, they go out to get coffee. An attractive young woman walks into the cafe. She’s exactly Dinesh’s type—tall, dark hair. Gilfoyle has seen Dinesh hit on enough women to know his preferences.

 

Gilfoyle carefully watches Dinesh as he briefly glances at her, only to avert his eyes and continue their conversation as if she were not there.

 

“So anyway, I see your point, but I still think a smaller spaceship would be more advantageous in an intergalactic war. Being able to store an extra year of fuel and supplies won’t do one of your giant ships any good if they can get shot down immediately because they’re such big targets.”

 

“So what, you would just kamakaze the enemy until their forces are destroyed? You’d have to spend way too much money just to sustain your military resources.”

 

“Yeah, but it wouldn’t be any less than the upfront cost of building your giant death star things. See...” Dinesh goes on, excitedly explaining his hypothetical intergalactic war strategy.

 

Gilfoyle feels his heartmark pulse—by now, it’s a routine occurrence around Dinesh. He and Dinesh understand each other on a fundamental level. He wishes he wouldn’t have to be stuck in this limbo of unrequited love in order to keep their friendship intact.

 

**

 

Gilfoyle also notices that Dinesh is careful to hide his heartmark.

 

Dinesh fidgets with his left sleeve a lot, always making sure it covers his wrist. Once, it slips, and Gilfoyle is surprised to see a thick wristband hugging his heartmark. He can’t tell if Dinesh is hiding it from everyone else, or from himself.

 

One evening, they watch a movie. They’re sitting on the couch side by side, a bag of chips positioned neatly between them. When the movie is over, they are too lazy to stand up and put on another movie, but too awake to want to go to sleep. For a minute, they sit in comfortable silence.

 

“Fuck heartmarks,” Dinesh mutters suddenly, fiddling with the wristband on his left arm.

 

“Agreed.”

 

“You know, we should get rid of them. Burn them, or remove the skin, or something.”

 

“If that worked, I would have done that already,” Gilfoyle said dismissively. “Apparently, heartmarks are connected to the heart. If you damage your heartmark, you’re directly damaging your internal organs.”

 

“Hm. At least that would provide me with a viable suicide option,” Dinesh says darkly.

 

“Don’t,” Gilfoyle says at once, grabbing Dinesh’s shoulder. Dinesh doesn’t flinch away from the contact. “I mean—suicide is fucking stupid. Don’t do it just because of a heartmark.”

 

“A defective heartmark,” Dinesh mutters. “My heartmark is defective, and it’s making my life miserable. The more I try to hide it and forget about it, the more I think about it. I wish I could be like you and just not care.”

 

“Not care?” Gilfoyle choked. “I wish I didn’t care.”

 

“You know,” Dinesh says. “We both hate our heartmarks. They each make us feel like shit. We feel like shit for having to hide them all the time. So why don’t we make a truce?”

 

“We show each other our heartmarks, and never tell anybody else what we saw,” Gilfoyle breathes.

 

“I’ll trust you,” Dinesh said, “if you trust me.”

 

“I trust you.”

 

Dinesh steadies a hand over his wristband, readying to remove it. “So are we actually doing this?”

 

Gilfoyle looks at him and puts a hand to his own left wrist, dazed. “You know, I’ve never shown anybody my heartmark before.”

 

“Is that a yes?”

 

“Three...two...” Gilfoyle counts down, locking his gaze on Dinesh. _He’s the reason why I’m doing this._ “One...zero.”

 

Dinesh removes his wristband in one smooth motion, and Gilfoyle tugs off his own. They both sit there in silence, looking down at their own wrists, before simultaneously making eye contact.

 

It’s Dinesh who starts nervously laughing, and Gilfoyle soon joins him.

 

“I didn’t even look at your heartmark yet,” Dinesh says breathlessly. “I was too nervous about exposing my own.”

 

“Same,” Gilfoyle says quietly.

 

They laugh awkwardly for a few more moments, never breaking eye contact to look down at each other’s wrists. Eventually, the laughter dies down.

 

“I guess I’ll go first,” Dinesh says, extending his left arm towards Gilfoyle. “This is my broken heartmark. It’s red, and fucking huge, and it thinks I’m in love with that girl from TechCrunch but I’m really not. And I looked up average sizes for heartmark blemishes, and I know that a mark of this size is rare. I’m not going to get another one like this in my lifetime. And if I can’t feel anything for a girl that gave me a blot that big, there isn’t any hope for me at all. Romantically speaking.”

 

“That’s why you deleted Tinder,” Gilfoyle breathes.

 

“So yeah. That’s me and my depressing heartmark. You know, you should have gone first. There’s no way you’re going to be able to top this, in terms of being pitifully depressing,” Dinesh says with a forced smugness, as if he’s trying to restore their natural state of casual bickering.

 

“Oh yeah?” Gilfoyle says, before ( _I can’t believe I’m fucking doing this_ ) extending ( _seriously what am I doing_ ) his left arm ( _aaaah what the fuck)_ so that Dinesh could see his heartmark.

 

He didn’t want to look at his heartmark, so he instead looked at Dinesh’s facial expression. Smugness, then shock, then confusion, than pity, than some indecipherable emotion.

 

“Holy shit...”

 

“I know. Fuck me.”

 

“How did you, um. Get it?”

 

“Each black dot is a different person,” Gilfoyle says. “Each one I liked, or loved, or could have loved—I don’t know—but I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. Tara is the biggest black dot.”

 

“So in reality, you’re a big softie?”

 

“Fuck you,” Gilfoyle says with absolutely no conviction.

 

“Who’s the red for? That’s the darkest red I’ve ever seen on a heartmark.”

 

Gilfoyle watches Dinesh carefully study his heartmark and feels years of self-built walls crumbling down. He doesn’t respond, frozen.

 

“Wait a minute,” Dinesh says slowly. “The red mark. It’s sort of...bean-shaped.” He holds up his own heartmark to compare. “That’s the same exact shape as my heartmark. But bigger.”

 

“It’s for you, okay?” Gilfoyle says suddenly, voice cracking. “You don’t have to rub it in.”

 

Dinesh looks at him with his intense contemplative facial expression and doesn’t speak.

 

“I got it the first day we met. After spending one day with you, it was bigger than all these little black dots combined. What I used to do with new red dots was ignore the person until my feelings for them went away, but with you that was impossible since I liked you too damn much...and before I knew it I was breaking up with Tara, and you were my best friend, and it was killing me that I couldn’t tell you about this without ruining our friendship.”

 

Gilfoyle flushes. He can’t remember the last time he’s been this honest with another person. He doesn’t think he’s ever been this honest with another preson.

 

Dinesh looks at him, then smiles at him, then kisses him.

 

It’s a short and sweet kiss. When it’s over, Gilfoyle can’t help but goofily grin at Dinesh.

 

“For what it’s worth...” Dinesh says. “Back at TechCrunch, I think I knew deep down that my heartmark was for you. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. Seeing your code from an unbiased perspective made me realize I lov—liked you for your mind. After that, ever little thing we did together as friends caused my heartmark to pulse.”

 

Gilfoyle laughs. “Mine pulses whenever you send me a new section of your code to test,” he says.

 

“Mine pulses whenever I watch you write code.”

 

“Mine pulses whenever I think about you writing code.”

 

“Mine pulses whenever you bring me a drink from the kitchen without me asking.”

 

“Mine pulses whenever you come back from the kitchen. I think I subconsciously miss you whenever you leave the room.”

 

“We are so fucking whipped,” Dinesh says.

 

“Whipped as fuck,” Gilfoyle agrees, pulling Dinesh in for another kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> End notes: To be honest, I’m not too happy with how this turned out. I love soulmate AU’s, but I don’t have the skills to pull them off. I prefer writing fluff/humor to angst/drama, and it shows. I was going for a dream sequence-y vibe, hence the time skips / constant pov changes / writing in the present tense. But imho the writing is just awkward. Against my better judgment, I’m posting this. Hope you enjoy anyway. :) My next story will be happier and fluffier.


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